Hands-On Literacy Activities

The end of the year is approaching quickly, and it’s getting harder to keep little hands and minds engaged! April and May make shiny literacy routines feel dull and tired. It’s totally normal to look ahead at your week and not feel excited about the classroom work you need to prep. You’re gearing up for a break, and the enthusiasm is wearing off. But, if you feel like the classroom activities you’re planning are overdone, chances are your students feel the same way!

Today, I have a list of engaging, hands-on literacy activities to share with you! These are great for center work, small group, early finisher tasks, or to send home in a list for students to do over the summer!

Alphabet Beads

Spring is the perfect time to start working in manipulatives that you don’t want to use all year long. There are some tools for activities that are just kind of a mess to manage, or expensive to replenish all year long, but students love them. Beads are one of them for me! Putting alphabet beads out in the classroom makes students SO excited.

Place a container of letter beads with some string, twine, etc. and some word cards. Students can choose a card, build the word on their string, then clear it off and start again. If there is extra time, students can build other words they know (their name, their school, etc.).

Tweezers and Letters

Fine motor skills are so important in kindergarten! End of the year is not the time to step away from this important skill. I love to work in sensory bins with fun, new materials all the way until the end of the year. Grab your most fun letters, some bright, colorful paper pieces, pom poms, noodles, etc. and a few plastic tweezers. Students can build sight words or spelling words for the week during this activity. They must use the tweezers to pull out the letters they need to build the words. Or, simply make this center a letter and sound identification station! When students pull out a letter, they must name it, make the sound it makes, name a word that starts with that sound, and put it back!

Crumpled Paper

This is as simple as it sounds, but packs a huge instructional punch! Write letters, sight words, etc. on small pieces of paper, and crumple the paper into balls. In the winter, these could be snowballs. In the spring, these can be basketballs or baseballs! Students choose a piece of paper, unfold it, and read the word or letter on the paper. You could turn this into a matching activity, where capital and lowercase letters are in the same bin, and students are hunting for matches, etc.

Puzzle Pieces

Alphabet puzzles seem like they wouldn’t be as engaging by the end of the year, but you can breathe new life into them at the end of Kindergarten by changing the directions! Take your alphabet puzzles, and add some other common supplies to a center with them. Have students match a letter with a classroom object and record the letter and word they found. Or, place alphabet cards in the area! Students can choose a card, find the matching letter in the puzzle, and use random household materials to scoop it up and place in their collection.

Send the Learning Home!

I wrote recently about my Home-School Connection pages for alphabet practice. After doing all of this amazing hands-on literacy practice at school, you can keep the momentum going by sending the Alphabet practice pages home! These pages have students write letters, build with blocks and play dough, and draw pictures! Take a look at that product HERE!